Hey friend! Have fun exploring Q&A, but in order to ask your own
questions, comment, or give thumbs up, you need to be logged in to your
Moz Pro account.
You can also earn access by receiving 500
MozPoints
from participating in YouMoz and the Moz Blog!

More Traffic From Lower Rankings?

I have access to analytics for two different sites that rank for the same keyword. Strangely, the site that ranks on page 3 gets three times as much traffic as the site that ranks on page 1 (rankings according to multiple SEO tools as well as my own browser).

Click through in the SERPS can be affected by a number of things, but a site ranking on page 3 getting more traffic for that keyword than a page 1 site? Wow!

If you're sure the ranking are a true reflection of what everyone else is seeing for that particular keyword... (without knowing the keyword/sites then it's impossible to be specific)

What's the difference in the way the two sites are presented in the SERPS? Do they have equally compelling titles/snippets that invite searchers to take action? What about reputation/trust? Is one of the sites a known name? Does the URL or title look spammy? Is one page heavily shared so appears on people's personalised searches? What about author mark-up?

How well does the search snippet answer the "am I going to find what I'm looking for?" question?

What about searching from mobile / local search? Is one of the sites getting a lift because people searching for the keyword in relation to their known or implied location?

How complicated/niche/specific is the keyword and what is the intent? If the keyword is very specific or in a very niche market then people may be willing to dive deeper through the search results to find the answer they're looking for.

What does google webmaster tools tell you about the average position for the search term for the two sites?

Edit: Meant to ask - what traffic volume are we talking about and what's the difference between the numbers for each site?

As Doug mentions I would look at local search in the first instance. If relevant check out the keyword traffic by country of origin in analytics. Rankings can change quite a lot depending on country, might be that the site on page 3 where you are looking is page one in other places. Also depending on the country/audience your first site might have a much higher percentage of 'not provided' which could be hiding the real number of visits for that keyword.

Hey friend! Have fun exploring Q&A, but in order to ask your own
questions, comment, or give thumbs up, you need to be logged in to your
Moz Pro account.
You can also earn access by receiving 500
MozPoints
from participating in YouMoz and the Moz Blog!
Learn more.